


Snowed Inn

by Rykura



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Christmas, Cold, Gemshipping, M/M, inn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 17:09:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16769356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rykura/pseuds/Rykura
Summary: Bakura and Ryou are trapped at an inn in the middle of nowhere and there’s only one bed left.





	Snowed Inn

**Author's Note:**

> My first official write for these two. Not that confident, but here it is! Enjoy~

“Only _one_ bed left?” The man in front of him asked and the lady behind the counter cringed.

“And it’s already been reserved, I’m sorry sir.”

“And the power’s out, you’ve gotta be shitting me!” The man threw his hands up before reaching up to rub his forehead with one hand and rest the other on his hip; properly aggravated.

“Uhm…” Ryou stepped up to the front desk and the man turned to glare at him from the corner of his eye and the white haired boy shrunk a bit. Although the man was shorter than him by just a couple inches, they were barely noticeable due to the menacing aura he gave off. “You can have the room,” he said timidly.

“What?” The man hissed.

“I reserved the room, under the name Ryou,” he directed the last part to the lady who checked her clipboard and nodded.

“You’re Mr. Hikari?”

Ryou nodded to her before turning back to the shorter man. “You can have it if you want.”

“Really?” The man turned the rest of the way around, revealing a gruesome looking scar going along the right side of his face that stalled Ryou for a moment.

“Y-yeah…” He said, distracted by the scar.

“Then where will you stay?” The man asked, gesturing accusingly towards him and Ryou shook himself before looking down, realizing it might be rude to be caught staring.

“...I could stay down here and work until they get the generator working. I wasn’t planning on sleeping much tonight anyway.”

The man stared at him for a few moments and Ryou glanced back up to study his features. He had sharp violet eyes under thick dark lashes, ragged, silver hair and tan skin that contrasted with the lighter tissue of the scar under his eye. He seemed exotic, but not out of place.

“What’s your name?” The man finally asked.

“I’m Ryou.”

“Ryou,” the man tested the name and Ryou liked the way it sounded. “I’m Bakura. How about you and me share the room.”

Ryou gave him a suspicious look and Bakura raised his hands in an appeasing way.

“Promise I don’t bite. You said you didn’t plan on sleeping anyway, right?”

Ryou thought for a moment and found that he wouldn’t mind the company. Despite the nasty scar he was quite handsome and his eyes shone with sincerity behind his mischievous tone.

“...I guess. Yeah, okay,” the taller boy agreed.

“I’d be happy to bring up some extra blankets and pillows if you do fall asleep though!” The girl behind the counter piped up, trying to appease them in the unfortunate situation.

“That’d be great,” Ryou thanked and Bakura nodded as well.

Leading the way up the festively decorated stairwell in the darkened entrance, Bakura asked, “Do you work?”

Ryou followed a step behind. “I’m still in school, but I also have a job as a translator.”

“What do you translate?” The other man inquired and Ryou hummed uncomfortably.

“Hm… I translate Japanese documents into English.”

“Really? Sounds boring.”

“It can be…” He studied the patches on the other’s leather jacket as they reached the second floor and traversed down the hallway to their room. “What do you do?” He asked.

“Well…” Bakura shrugged slightly. “I build, fix, sell and ride motorcycles.”

“So, you’re a mechanic?”

“That’s right.”

Ryou noticed how nearly every inch of the arms of his jacket were lined with patches from all different places and wondered. “Did you… ride your motorcycle here?”

“Like _hell_ ,” Bakura scoffed. “She _is_ sittin’ in the back of my truck though.”

“You take it with you in the snow?”

“I take her everywhere.”

Ryou noticed the way he called it a _her_. “...did you name her?”

“Diabound.”

Ryou tilted his head. “That’s an odd name.”

“It has sentimental meaning.” Before Ryou could ask what he meant they had reached their door and Bakura pulled out the key the girl behind the counter had offered them to unlock it.

“Damn…” Bakura rubbed his hands together as he entered the room, “It’d be a cozy place if it wasn’t freezing as hell.”

“Yeah…” Ryou could see his own breath as he entered as well and set his bag on the desk on the far side of the room.

“I should ask if they got any candles down there. If the place set on fire because of one at least we’d have a bonfire to keep warm by.”

Ryou snorted at that. “Way to look on the bright side, literally,” he said. Bakura went searching through the bathroom and cupboards while Ryou pulled out his laptop and opened it, ready to dive into work and ignore the cold beginning to numb his fingers.

“Oh shoot!” He cursed, holding down the power button and running a hand through his pearly hair, exasperated. “My laptop is dead and I can’t charge it with the power out!”

“And there’s nothing I can burn in here. Fuck’s sake...” Bakura came back out of the bathroom shrugging defeatedly before continuing to look around the room.

Ryou stared at his reflection in the black of his laptop screen before shutting it and slipping it back into his bag. He rifled through his clothes until he realized he’d left his good jacket in his car and sighed, pulling his legs up with chattering teeth as he rubbed his arms.

“Are you cold?” Bakura asked, noticing the boy’s state while fruitlessly trying to turn on a lamp.

Ryou sighed. “I had the heat in my car on high so I took off my good jacket, then I rushed to get inside and left it in my car…” He trailed off and Bakura hesitated for a moment before going over and loozing around in his duffel bag before pulling out a blue winter jacket with fur trim and coming over to hand it to the shivering boy.

“Here,” Ryou stared at it for a moment before taking it with stiff fingers and slipping it on, finding the inside very soft and warming.

“Thank you...”

Bakura flopped onto the creaky bed with a grunt and rolled over to face the ceiling, hands tucked under his head. “You can keep it for all I care.”

Ryou didn’t say anything. He would probably try to slip it back into his bag later.

“...I wish this was a real fireplace,” he commented after looking around the room absentmindedly for a while.

“You’d think it _would_ be in a remote place like this.”

“This can’t be the first time this has happened,” Ryou agreed.

“Guess you have no choice but to sleep, huh?” Bakura gave him a sidelong glance and Ryou looked away, out the whitened window.

“I guess so.”

A minute passed and Ryou realized he was staring off into space and shook himself out of it to look over at Bakura, who was staring at him with a dubious look. “Like I said, I don’t bite,” he said resauringly and Ryou looked up at him through his bangs.

“I wasn’t worried.”

“Doesn’t seem like it. You keep to the corner of the room like a trapped little mouse.”

“...I’m just not used to this,” the brown eyed boy responded with a shrug.

“Sharing a room?” Bakura asked, the other nods. “What, no siblings?”

“...one.”

“Well I don’t have any,” he said, crossing his ankles over one another on the bed. “No parents either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” His eyes turned soft as he momentarily reminisced a hidden memory. “I’ve been lone wolfing it for quite some time.”

“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” Ryou questioned and the shorter male smirked, answering nonchalantly.

“Twenty six. How about you?”

“...twenty.”

“Really?” He awed, giving him an impressed look. “Honestly don’t know what I expected.”

“What do you mean?” Ryou asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously for a moment and a pout forming on his lips.

“I mean I thought you were younger,” the older man supplied and Ryou looked away again, a little flattered.

“Thanks, I guess.” He fidgeted, not wanting to stop talking. “I didn’t think you were your age either.”

“What’d you assume then?”

Ryou tried to come up with how he looked; he hadn’t actually pondered his age. “...Twenty three?”

“Thank god,” Bakura laughed. “With all the shit I’ve done you’d think I’d get some wrinkles at the least by now.”

Ryou wondered what he’d done as a motorcyclist or an engineer to promote that kind of answer. He didn’t ask about it, however. “...where were you headed before the storm hit?”

“Detroit. It’s my hometown originally, but I like to travel so I’m on my way back to spend Christmas with my shitty friends.”

“Oh...”

“And you?”

“I was coming to visit my sister for Christmas. She lives just an hour from here but she told me to pull over and wait until the roads were safer instead of drive through the snow.”

“Probably for the best.” He nodded towards the window. You could barely see the parking lot through the whirling winds of snow cascading around the second story window now. They stared out for a bit until a knock at the door caused Ryou to jump in his chair whereas Bakura’s looked over unaffected by the sudden intrusion.

Ryou stood from the chair and traversed across the cold carpet to open the door and find the girl from behind the desk smile up at him, her arms carrying a pile of blankets and pillows.

“Here’s some blankets!” She sung and Ryou took them graciously.

“Thank you.”

“It’s fortunate you two decided to share a room,” she sighed, wiping her forehead. “More people are trickling in from the storm and the living area is being set up with blankets to accommodate since we’re already out of spare rooms. It’s quite a mess, but we can’t just turn them out into the storm again.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Ryou asked worriedly, placing the blankets and pillows at the base of the bed by Bakura’s feet.

“Oh no, it’s all being taken care of, just don’t be surprised if you see the giant slumber party going on downstairs,” she giggled. “Since we have a traditional water boiler in the back we’re going to be making cocoa, tea and coffee for anybody who’s interested, so if you’d like some you can come down anytime!”

“I might grab a cup in a bit,” Bakura said and Ryou nodded to her as well.

“I think I will too. Thank you.”

“No problem!” The girl winked at them, hurrying off most likely to help downstairs and Ryou shut the door behind her..

The younger male went and riffled through his bag again as Bakura groaned. “God damn. I was planning on a hot shower but I guess that’s not happening.”

“Want to play something?” Ryou asked and Bakura perked up, watching him with an amused glint in his eyes.

“A game?”

“Yeah,” Ryou held up a box of cards. “I always keep a deck of cards on me, in case something like this happened.”

Bakura laughs, a real laugh that warms Ryou’s chest a bit at the sound. He wondered when the last time he laughed was. “Alright. Let’s play something.”

They play with the cards for sometime, all different kinds of games and Bakura is excitable and enthusiastic where Ryou is pleasantly amused. Eventually they go down to the lobby to get hot drinks; Bakura gets coffee, though it’s more like milk with a hint of coffee in it, and Ryou gets hot chocolate with whipped cream and mini marsh mellows. They decide to take their drinks up to their room since the lobby was becoming crowded with survivors from the storm and eventually found themselves sipping on them languidly across from each other at the small table by the window over easy conversation about their travels.

“You said you’re visiting your sister?” The older male asked, leaning back comfortably in the flower print chair.

“Yeah. I haven’t seen her in a while,” Ryou said softly, much more comfortable around the other man after playing some games with him and with a cup of cocoa warming his hands.

“You live apart?”

“Well, we live close, basically together, but I was taking a trip for a convention in Montana.” Bakura hummed, swallowing down some coffee. “What about your friends?”

Bakura threw his head back dramatically and groaned. “They’re two _insufferable_ love birds who, when combined, make one crazy person and one normal person, but they each have a little bit of both, one more so than the other in both aspects. But, I guess it takes one to know one. I’d _have_ to be a bit crazy being their friend.”

“Sounds interesting,” Ryou smiled.

“That’s an understatement.”

They lapsed into silence and Ryou thought about what he said earlier, about ‘lone wolfing it’. Traveling on a motorcycle he probably built and named himself wherever he wanted, without family...

“...you know, I don’t have any parents either.” Bakura’s attention shifted away from the window to the boy across from him, soft voice made even softer with the topic of discussion. “My mother died in a car crash that almost killed my sister. My father worked himself to death to pay for her life support and she survived, but then he got sick, and we had no money left to help him...” Ryou stalled a moment, realizing it might be silly to be confessing such a thing to a stranger and swallowed the last of his hot chocolate before putting his cup down. The cold was made even more intense on his fingers after having just been warmed.

“I’m sorry,” the other male murmured but Ryou shook his head.

“It was… years ago. It’s fine now.” But it wasn’t fine.

Amane and him were split in the foster system where she ended up with loving and wealthy parents and he ended up in a group home. He wrote to her whenever he could, and she him, and he studied hard in school getting a full ride to whatever college he wanted so of course he chose a school in the same state as Amane. He stayed in a dorm room for a year before getting a job and moving into his own apartment.

Everything was better _now_ , definitely. He could see Amane anytime he wanted, he was majoring in language, minoring in writing; but in his efforts to get back the last piece of family he had left, he’d become isolated. He had no long term friends to speak of, he’d gotten a stay at home job with no social interaction required and his life had become bland and dull. His white canvas of a life was given mere splashes of color from his childhood, from the time spent with his sister, and from this odd moment trapped in an inn with a stranger who was doing just fine all by himself; some cold grey blue and intense violet swirled up from the bottom of light pastels and white background...

“It’s not fine. It’s fucked up.” Ryou looked at him, surprised. Bakura’s eyes were steady as he stared at him. They shined as though he knew everything, as though he’d seen it a thousand times and was sick and tired of it. “You’re allowed to be sad about that shit you know. Everyone has trauma, and if someone else’s is worse that doesn’t make yours any less terrible. You’re aloud to be angry and sad about it.”

“I know…” Ryou was surprised by his own voice, how quiet it was; how it quivered in the silence of their cold room. He thought then; tried to recal the last time he had cried about his mother or his father or his life.

When his father told him his mother wasn’t coming home, his face tight with sadness, his arms stiff around his shaking shoulders as he cried into his chest, at fifteen years old, that was the last time. Since then schoolwork had numbed his mind, the loss numbed his heart and the separation from Amane numbed his body.

Very few times since that moment did he remember a spark, a feeling, besides the numbness which he hadn’t realized had taken over his senses until that very moment. He’d felt it when he was with Amane, when they lowered his father and mother into their graves, and then, when he let the hot tears welled up in his soul for years finally slip down his face in a waterfall of grief.

And it was that day under the most bizarre circumstances, when Mother Nature apparently had had enough and trapped him in a hole in the earth to finally look at himself, that he realized he’d never _finished_ grieving, he’d just put it on pause. And he hid his face in his pulled up knees and sobbed, quietly, trying to muffle his crying in the quiet, cold, dark room. He was so cold...

Then he he fell into a warm embrace, his face was pressed into a warm, hard chest and he gasped in Bakura’s comforting, dusty scent, clinging to his leather jacket tight enough that the man wouldn’t be able to pull away even if he wanted to. He realized then that it was also the last time he’d cried that he’d been held as such too, and he hiccuped and sobbed a little harder at the thought.

He felt like something broken and Bakura was holding him together and he didn’t want to be let go, to hell if they’d just met that day. Bakura was warm, and he’d been so cold for such a long time, the heat was intoxicating.

That’s why he didn’t dare let go when nearly an hour of crying passed, when his tears finally ran dry, his throat throbbed with the failed effort to quiet his whines and whimpers and his hands became sore from the tight grip he held on Bakura’s jacket. The older man just held him dutifully, occasionally rubbing his back or petting his hair soothingly, tempting a new batch of tears from Ryou but he blinked them away with a sniffle.

A few minutes after the crying subsided, he finally pulled away and rubbed his eyes and Bakura let him go almost disappointedly so with the way Ryou had to push against his grip slightly to remove himself from his embrace.

“I’m sorry…” The younger male muttered with a sniff and Bakura’s expression was soft with understanding.

“It happens. Feel better?”

His heart still hurt, it would probably for a while, but he could _feel_ it hurting more than ever. It wasn’t numb; his chest was heavy and warm, not cold and empty like before.

He nodded with another sniffle and Bakura smiled at him, softly… nervously?

“...you maybe wanna… sleep together?” Ryou stared at him for a few seconds before snorting, chuckling and then laughing outright. “I mean- in the same bed!” He exclaimed.

“I know what you meant you weirdo,” Ryou said with a giggle, head diving down to lean against Bakura’s chest which bounced as he chuckled.

“How am _I_ weird? You carry a deck of cards around with you wherever you go!”

“That’s not weird, that’s practical. And I feel like you would too if you were more of a gambler.”

“Do you gamble?”

Ryou raised and tilted his head, giving him a shrug. “Sometimes.”

“No shit, what for?”

“Well…”

And like that they returned to talking, reminded fleetingly of Ryou’s breakdown from little sniffles interrupting his sentence from time to time. Little time passed after they had returned to talking when the lights in the room flickered to life and they could hear the resounding cheer from the lobby downstairs.

Ryou plugged in his phone and laptop to charge and Bakura turned on the fireplace which started eagerly filling the room with heat. They sat in front of the fireplace and talked and played more card games until they decided it was getting late, or at least Bakura did since Ryou was a night owl and had no conception of a good time for bed, and they decided they should get ready for bed.

They took turns in the bathroom, changed into their sleepwear which for Ryou was actual pajama pants and a t-shirt and for Bakura was sweatpants and a muscle shirt. Ryou thought the shirt fit his defined muscles deliciously, then splashed cool water on his burning face in shame at the thought.

When Ryou finished Bakura was chewing his lip, looking down at the blankets sitting on the end of the bed and looked up at him then away when he came back in, believing the answer to his question hours before was a no.

“So…” He started awkwardly, ready to ask if he should sleep on the floor, but was cut short when Ryou took his hand and gave him a tired, imploring look.

“I’m cold.” Bakura stared as Ryou crawled into the bed, tugging the shorter male with him before smiling, tail wagging if he had one and when they were both settled under the comforter Ryou used his shoulder as a pillow and curled his hands against his chest, shivering under the cool sheets. Bakura turned into him a bit, one arm resting on the dip of his back and the other against his shoulder blades.

“Is this okay?” He asked.

“It’s great,” Ryou mumbled from the crook of his neck and he felt Bakura try to contain a shiver from his breath on his skin.

“Night then.”

“G’night…”

He’d _never_ slept more soundly.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading ;w; I don’t have such a great grip on these two’s conversational dynamics yet, so I’m open for any tips or suggestions you might have!  
> Also I already have a working epilogue for this story, just another short chapter that I might post later when we’re closer to Christmas. Let me know if you’re interested! COMMENTS FEED THE WRITERS FLAME!


End file.
